For those who don’t already know, I’m a big fan of Linux. I’ve got some variation of it on practically every computer I own. Something I have only done with moderate success, though, is build my own system from scratch. I just saw today, where Linux from Scratch has just released LFS-6.6-rc1. Personally, if it’s your first time through, I would recommend going with their stable release, instead. The biggest issue is that you have to have a good solid Linux distribution to build from in the first place. Either Debian or Ubuntu will work quite well for this, or you can download the live CD from Linux from Scratch to use that as your base. (A small note about the LFS Live CD: The current stable release is 6.5, but the live CD is only at version 6.3. It will still meet the requirements to build 6.5, or you can build 6.3 directly from the CD, but due to security issues that have come to light since then, I wouldn’t recommend it.)
You may be wondering exactly what the point of building your own Linux system from source is. Well, for me, the point was to learn more about the functionality of Linux. While a good deal of the commands you use are spelled out for you, they are also explained to some degree. This is not, however, a task for beginners. You do need some rudimentary knowledge of Linux and compiling programs. There are some excellent resources mentioned on the site and in the distribution instructions to help you with this.
A small word of advice if you do decide to take on this challenge: Make sure you have a relatively fast system. While you can build this on relatively old hardware, there are components that may take the better part of a day, if not longer to complete, if your system is fairly slow. My first attempt was on a 300 MHz machine with only 384 MB RAM, and compiling some of the beefier tools needed to actually perform the build took over 24 hours to complete. Admittedly, when I tried again on my 1.7 GHz machine, things did go much faster, it would have been better if I would have had more than 768 MB RAM. Ideally, a system for this project should have at least a 2 GHz processor and at least 1.5 GB RAM. Hard drive space, ironically, isn’t quite as important. A 40 GB drive properly partitioned should be more than adequate if your intended use is primarily a desktop or laptop workstation.
